The
story of the failure of SACD and DVD-Audio is a long and disappointing
tale that has far-reaching negative impact for the music and
audio-video industry alike. In 1993 the domestic record sales, powered
almost exclusively by Compact Disc, were near 33 billion dollars
yearly. Today, nearly a decade and a half later domestic record sales
have dropped to about $9 billion per year with an additional $3 billion
per year for downloads and another $3 billion for ring tones.
Unquestionably, the music business has lost a lot of its luster in a
very short period of time and is dragging the audiophile market segment
down the drain with them.

As
a long-time Prince fan, I was lured into my home theater this Sunday
afternoon to watch the half time show of the Super Bowl. Despite his
many quirks, Prince is an amazing artist on many levels. His ability to
play more than a dozen instruments, his prolific songwriting and his
cross-generational appeal all make him one of the greatest musical
entertainers and performers of our time. By my standards Prince ranks
up there with the likes of Michael Jackson, Jimi Hendrix, Igor
Stravinsky, Miles Davis and John Coltrane as a twentieth century
musical master.

Syd
Barret, co founder of Pink Floyd has died at the age of 60. Barret
founded Pink Floyd with fellow members Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and
Richard Wright. He left the band and music industry in the early stages
to live reclusively.
Barret wrote many of first hits for
Pink Floyd including the band’s 1967 album “The Piper At The Gates Of
Dawn”, as well as their first hits “Arnold Layne” and “See Emily Play”.

Billy
Preston, the keyboardist who landed dream gigs with the Beatles and the
Rolling Stones and enjoyed his own series of hit singles, died Tuesday
at 59.
Preston's longtime manager, Joyce Moore, said
Preston had been in a coma since November in a care facility and was
taken to a hospital in Scottsdale, Arizona, Saturday after his
condition deteriorated.

You’ve
heard many times on the pages of AVRev.com about how the woes of the
music industry can’t be placed solely on the shoulders of peer-to-peer
file swapping or piracy. The fact that the compact disc is still a poor
value was never more evident to me than when I was at the mega
electronics store WOW! in Long Beach, California this weekend. This
staggeringly large store features a fully stocked Tower Records/Video,
along with the newly merged CompUSA/Good Guys! I went in to pick up
some toner for my laser printer and, for some reason, the once familiar
but long forgotten desire to browse the CD racks came over me. I
realized that in my collection of “must have” music, I had a gaping
hole. I didn’t have the Metallica CD … And Justice for All, and I
wasn’t about to break out my worn-out cassette version or download the
album from ...